Austin Ranked Third Best "City To Live and Make Movies." Jealous, Albuquerque?

For the sixth year in a row, MovieMaker Magazine has ranked Austin in the top 3 of its “Top Ten U.S. Cities to Live and Make Movies” list. And though we’ve slipped a little this year (we sat at number two for the last two years, just behind New York City), we still beat the crap out of Shreveport, which feels pretty good.

Moviemaker cited the “unique education and support that the [Austin] community fosters through film festivals, special screenings [and] retrospectives” as reasons for the pick, and Gary Bond, director of the Austin Film Office, went on to add “The support of city government and the local film industry including the Austin Film Festival, Austin Studios and South by Southwest are crucial to our success as a film hub”.

Just this past week, director Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People, Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story) visited Austin to shoot a scene for his new film A Mighty Heart. When asked by Statesman reporter Chris Garcia why he chose Austin for the shoot, Winterbottom replied, "Obviously, a lot of film gets made here, so it's a good place to come. It has a reputation for independent film and it has good crews."

Austin was home to more than 22 feature films in 2006 (including Fast Food Nation, The Hitcher, Teeth, Grindhouse and Gary the Tennis Coach) and somewhere in the neighborhood of $131.9 million was spent making movies here. Other Top Ten cities include: (1) New York, (2) Philadelphia, (4) Albuquerque, (5) Las Vegas, (6) Shreveport-Bossier City, (7) Memphis, (8) Miami, (9) Portland and (10) Salt Lake City.

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By math in Arts & Entertainment on February 12, 2007 11:08 AM 0 Comments

Comments [rss]

Noma

Send us, Shreveport, your movies. That'll really spank us. But ya know, we need spanked.

JUBCHA

THIS IS AWESOME. I'M WORKING ON A SCRIPT CALLED: GUTTER RATS. IM HALF-WAY DONE.

LOOK FOR IT SOON.

Stew

Here's the problem mark,

Not only do I not like people coming to Austin, which I agree I cannot do much anything about, I am paying for these people to come and make movies. Whether it is through a local proposition giving millions to the Austin Film scene or through Rick Perry's 20-40 million dollar Texas Film initiative.

So I am growing the seed of my destruction. This is what pisses me off. Let the art scene fend for itself. If good movies are made in Texas, then people will go see them. You cannot pay someone to come to Austin and film some movie and expect everyone to like it.

ConanTheLibrarian

Left out of the comments and the article was the contribution the NBC series, "Friday Night Lights" is making to the Austin area, and the movie crews and actors that make Austin a favorite location for shoots. They paid me for 8 hours at $6.75 when I worked 2.5 hours on episode 15 and 5.5 hours on episode 14, unheard of business practice and extra wage in Austin before Peter Berg came to town. Dozens, if not hundreds of folks have been hired as crew. At least a half dozen actors have gotten SAG waiver jobs. And it was the first Craft Services Buffet since Emelio Estavez and Martin Sheen did "The War at Home" where there was NO extras vs. Cast & Crew Segregation.

And then there are the Six figure contributions in form of Money to PISD and a new Stadium to DVISD.

Say what you will about the series, from a particpant in the Austin Indie and Commercial film community, FNL is the best thing to happen to Austin in a long while. Much better than "Real World" and "Teeth".

caroday

2 for 2 posts of yours that have made me laugh

i think i'm developing a cyber crush

mark

Stew, shouldn't you be paying attention in class instead of suring the web? So jaded at such a young age...that bit is tired.

Marc

Austin: It Was So Much Cooler Before You Got Here.

Please, people.

Tarvin

Yep, pull up the drawbridge.

Or we'll have more traffic, more pollution, less greenspace, more crowded parks, more expensive housing, higher taxes.

Kathryn

Hello from Shreveport! Next year we will kick your yellow rose of Texas. Yee-haw!

Stew

I used to like this sort of thing, but now...NO!! DON'T COME TO AUSTIN. Don't come here and make a movie which will only convince more people to come here.

Stew

I used to celebrate these things, but now...NO MORE PEOPLE! Austin sucks to make a movie in, don't come here and make a movie that will convince even more people to come to Austin.